Perfectly Translated It Means "And Yo Mamma, Too, M...F..."
Written: May 12 '02
Product Rating:
Pros: Direction, acting, film's influences -- beautifully done almost all around.
Cons: ending -- I want to feel the weather, not have it forecast.
The Bottom Line: Mexican, Italian, and New French Cinemas are far sexier, narratively more intimate using sexual relationships as story linchpins more adroitly and arousingly than anything in American cinema.
Think Jules and Jim -- in this case Mexican best friends Tenoch and Julio on a giddy, angsty road trip through Mexico to a beach that doesn't exist called Heaven's Mouth. Along for the ride is an older woman, Luisa Cortes on a journey of sexual discovery.
Some discoveries are wonderful, revelatory (such as this film), but other discoveries can be far from comfortable. This film was not submitted to the MPAA for fear of an NC-17 for frank and, in this case quite deliciously filmed, sometimes humorous, sometimes pathetic, but always, for the film, winning, sexuality. There isn't one single sex scene among the many that's gratuitous -- all of them show both where the men and women, the boys and girls involved are at emotionally. Sometimes, those emotional terrains are not only tough to negotiate but uncomfortable and unusual to watch. Like I said, this is Jules and Jim meets Road Trip and, along the journey waves high to both Cheech and Chong and John Sayles.
At a party hosted by Tenoch's parents, Tenoch and Julio meet Luisa, a campaigner for the Mexican president (the movie is set during the previous election). As they co-flirt with her, they happen to mention going to a beach called Heaven's Mouth and invite the girl (this is the role Shelley Long or Linda Fiorentino would have played back in 1984). Initially sceptical, she decides to go along after her boyfriend phones her in drunken confession mode to tell her he just had an affair.
What are the odds of that happening? Nevermind the odds, here's the great film everyone makes of this neo-Beach Blanket movie. While the film doesn't follow the current foreign sell-to-America fad of our randy heroes slowly becoming politically conscious and diverse, the film is peppered with odd sidelong realities of dissidents being arrested, beaten, hustled into cars shown in passenger windows -- very healthy sets of reminders that this film takes place in a grounded universe.
The film also understands one basic rule of road trip reality -- at least reality as it is for best friends on a road trip. For every 400 miles, there has to be at least the threat of one knock-down drag out fight over petty frustrations and fourteen or fifteen sexual issues, all very specific for that scene, but which also carry the weight of that which isn't spoken, but which we see in the film -- locker room comparisons (guys, you know what I am talking about), mutual outdoor ma----- man, foreigners are just way more open. Loved the shot of the whipped creme landing in the leafy pool. Fertility and water images everywhere in this film. The scenes with the two boys trying to beat each other at underwater swimming are gorgeous.
But as a metaphor, 'taint exactly subtle. These scenes, and the film overall, do contain generous dollops of beauty, emotional generosity -- a film willing to explore darker angles, and unafraid of consequence of character's sexual actions.
The only problem: the ending. A certain reality has transpired and the film relies on the narrator to tell us of the emotional consequences where I wish I had been shown rather than told. Rare in any film that I am ever left hungry for MORE scenes -- more often I wish there had been far, far fewer scenes. Even this film's lone mis-step speaks equally to it strengths. of the "I gotta tell ya, I slept with your girlfriend." "Yeah, well I slept with your girlfriend. Fair?" "No way. You get down on your knees" And of course all this comes after both have just slept with Luisa.
Perhaps if the film had a fight scene where someone slashes a light saber across an alien torso, it might have earned a PG-13.
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